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I am with a friend, brushing my teeth, and the more I brush the more that seaweed falls from my mouth, intact and floating, fall like autumn leaves.

I am with the same friend in a different setting. We have one can of Progresso vegetable and barley soup, the type with the wrap around blue label adorning the classic aluminium can. I unwrap and unwrap the label, knowing that something is underneath. After 3 and a half unwrap I find the hidden secret printed on the very back: a treasure map, and the adventure begins.

I think of the word trepidation. I do not know the definition in my dream, but I am imagining the harmony from dissonance, internal hesitation due to unknown, unseen factors, moving in odd ways due to dark matter that you have to navigate around using intuition as an internal compass rose to see the sun. When I wake up, I look up the formal definition:

Trepidation as used in the field of astronomy means an imagined oscillation of the equinoxes. It should not be confused with precession. In precession, the equinoxes appear to move slowly through the ecliptic, completing a revolution in approximately 25,800 years (according to modern astronomers).

Dream Journey

Dreams are limited by the dreamer’s conscious experiences. Senses inform consciousness during the waking day; consciousness informs senses during dreams.

A sensation, that is, a fully integrated internal inclination, a feeling, fills in the blank slate of logic like a white canvas oozing bold colors.

Third morning of sickness within the past week. Today I leaned out the side of the city bus, relieved my sickness, and sat back down inside the bus. Another time, I woke up a fingernail past sunrise to do reike and yoga with a friend before he left for break. We spent most of the time talking. There, in my front yard before 9 am, I started dry heaving nothing, nothing, something– definitely not food but I definitely was sick.

I had my fingerprints scanned today, all ten. Apparently, I only have 9 fingerprints. one refuses to register. The livescan man digitally re-scanned it time and again until, finally, I am under the impression (not punny) that we just settled.

9 fingerprints. 3 mornings of sickness. A sensation. A reality? No, but the appearance of a potential.

Jung stated, ‘The idea of transformation and renewal by means of the serpent is a well-substantiated archetype. It is [a] healing [symbol]’ (Jung 7, par. 184)

The Ouroboros, or Snakes as Symbols of Spiritual Growth and Transformation

The ouroboros, the snake forever swallowing its own tail, is a famous alchemical symbol of transformation. Jung saw the ouroboros much like he saw the mandala, as an archetypal template of the psyche symbolizing eternity and the law of endless return. Instead of looking at life as a finite game played between the bookends of birth and death, the ouroboros symbolizes a dynamic state of change and purification.

A literal ouroboros isn’t necessary for a dream to have its symbolic meaning. Since waking life snakes routinely shed their skins, they are ready made symbols for change and transformation. Dreams where snakes shed skin or seeing snake skins in a dream also symbolize change and transformation. Old, outgrown behavioral patterns, relationships, or even careers may be sloughed off in favor of a new skin more appropriate to the dreamer’s growth.

This process of adjustment may not be comfortable. In waking life, snakes get cranky and irritable during the shedding process and the same may be true for the dreamer. All change involves the surrender of the comfortable and even when changes promise progress, trading the known for the unknown involves a disquieting abandonment of the familiar.

Dream Snakes as Fear Symbols

A lack of firsthand experience with snakes makes the serpent a creature representing a fear of the unknown. As such, snake dreams symbolize that unknown fear. The fear can be an intuitive warning or an unfounded anxiety about some undefinable, hidden something awaiting the dreamer in waking life.

Honest analysis of the waking life provides the key to deciphering snake dreams. Pursuing a life dream, especially an untried one, involves fear. It is tantamount that the dreamer considers whether that fear is founded, or if irrational anxiety is threatening the realization of a waking life dream.

I have been There before in dreams. This Twilight Kingdom exists unbounded to time and space, residing in the immutable framework of what remains when the constructs and illusions of permanence all fall down. The infinite potential of its landscape is an eternal ideology. There exists in perpetual obliquity: There is, independent from the tenants and dwellers, thoughts and ideas, that There supports.

I am Transient. My lifeline is a current that flows through the creek of a the crease between the layers of a folded world: the realms of Energy and Matter, or more lucidly, the realm of appearances and the realm of the illusion of appearances.

My life struggles to collect cohesive presence in either world all together. Thoughts, behaviors and cognitions can communicate beyond the divide but this has its disadvantages. Every thought falls from beyond the shadow of a doubt. Every feeling feigns an hysteric syndrome of unjustified dismissiveness, leading to sentimental expression weighted with the conviction of a parachute, fastened to pack a punch in its articulation on the masked backs of thoughts or behaviors in order to cross back into the common reality. Typically, I express my feelings into the common reality using the cognitive-behavior anchor points grounded there. Thus, how I feel makes itself known in the common reality as either pieces of jigsaw logic or hasty, impulsive reactivity. Feelings are more often than not the odd man out left alone in a world outside of time in infinite space. As a transient, I have gained access to trespass beyond the partisan, corporeal divide.

Here I appear again, as soon as I loop-swoop-disappear from There. What am I? A flippant holographic effect? An illusion? A lucid shoelace? A Pioneer? A purl stitch? Imagination my engine, feelings fuel the timeless travel, and a secret is masked behind the sensation that I am just as alive as a fragment of imagination as I am in this freckled sack of skin and bones.

I have been to this timeless location before, specifically. The dream is recurring with more depth and detail each time. Last night I was aware that I was dreaming: a transient dream and transient state, a Wanderer into a permanent place.

For this reason, my subjection to my fear informed me that I am part of the corporeal, common reality world, simultaneously. There is void of fear. The present absence of fear stands out like silence within a song. I pause and my heart palpates as if it were compassionate for the stillness set in the lack of beat outside of myself, accordingly. The Fearless face There inform me that because I am experiencing fear There because I perceive the contact with one archetype that served as a fear evoking stimulus. My ear would fall deaf to the cry of my fear if my fear realized its own petty perception. If I could activate my 3rd eye to see the invisible presence of the great everything, I would see that the one fearful stimulus is actually everywhere, and all around me.

There was a snake by my foot in the dark, dusk lair of There. I was within the confines of my landlords dilapidated wooden, sunken ship of a broken series of bungalow settlements. There was a snake by my foot and I yelp for my landlords help in fear. He was working on a mast to mask the gusts of harsh winds from breaking an entry in the form of a great howl through the cracks between the wooden panels. He mentioned something about filtering magnesium and oxides through the mast (magnesium trapper) that the wind carries. This, he said definitively, is for our own protection. He laughed at my irrational fear. Look around you, he said. You are surrounded by snakes. I did look, and I was surrounded by an astounding patchwork of piles of coiled snakes. He grins. How dumb to be scared of just one snake, that one snake, he said pointing to my original referent. You see one, fear that one, and are too blind to notice that what you fear is so much greater, the fears lie in piles around you. He said all of this with no fear of his pant leg touching the rattler of a snake. Get over your fear, and you can be free.

I have been There before in dreams, and I am positive that this Twilight Kingdom exists beyond the relative: I think it exists; therefore it exists. Perhaps There is an archetypal idea, and the infinite potential of its landscape is an eternal ideology. Existing in perpetual obliquity: There is, independent from the tenants and dwellers, thoughts and ideas, There supports.

I am Transient. My lifeline walks the crease between the layers of a folded world: the realms of Energy and Matter, or much lucidly, the realm of appearances and the realm of the illusion of appearances. My life struggles to collect cohesive presence in either world all together. Thoughts, behaviors and cognitions can communicate beyond the divide but this has its disadvantages. Every thought falls from beyond the shadow of a doubt, every feeling feigns an hysteric syndrome of unjustified , leading to sentimental expression weighted with the conviction of a parachute, fastened to pack a punch in its articulation on the masked backs of thoughts or behaviors in order to cross back into the common reality. Typically, I express my feelings as either intellectualized pieces of jigsaw logic or brewed into a hasty impulsive reaction. Feelings are more often than not the odd man out left alone in a world outside of time in infinite space. As a transient, I have gained access to trespass beyond the partisan, corporeal divide.

Here again as soon as I loop, swoop pulled out of There: a lucid shoelace, a purl stitch. Imagination my engine, feelings fuel the timeless travel, and a secret is masked behind the sensation that I am just as alive as a fragment of imagination as I am in this freckled sack of skin and bones.

I have been to this timeless location before, specifically. The dream is recurring with more depth and detail each time. Last night I was aware that I was dreaming, a transient dream in a transient state as a transient passerby. For this reason, my feeling of fear informed me I was part of the corporeal, reality world, simultaneously. The people with no fear in this told me it was because I was experiencing contact with one archetype and I would numb to the fear if my fear realized its own petty perception and that the fearful stimulus as all around me. There was a snake by my foot in the dark, duck lair of this dream. I was my landlords dilapidated wooden sunken ship of a broken series of bungalow settlements. There was a snake by my foot and I yelp for my landlords help in fear. He was working on a mast to mask the gusts of harsh wind from breaking an entry in the form of a great howl through the cracks between the wooden panels. He mentioned something about filtering magnesium and oxides through the mast (magnesium trapper) that the wind carries. This, he said definitively, is for our own protection. He laughed at my irrational fear. Look around you he said. You are surrounded by snakes. I did look, and I was surrounded by an astounding patchwork of piles of coiled snakes. He grins. How dumb to be scared of just one snake, that one snake, he said pointing to my original referent. You see one, fear that one, and are too blind to notice that what you fear is so much greater, the fears lie in piles around you. He said all of this with no fear of his pant leg touching the rattler of a snake. Get over your fear, and you can be free.

2 AM FREE WRITE

Hungry. Shaky. Can’t sleep. Again.

Heater on. Cold night. Heater hums out neighbors. Plus. Cold from the inside out. A humming machine is warm because its familiar. I am still cold. Hungry, no food. Contacts came today. Glee. Parents sent them in a box. Candy inside. The only food I have is a box of Good and Plenty. Angry at my agitation. A gift is gracious. They must not understand. I am hungry. Unopened licorice and no food to my name. Day 2 like this. Cold.

It’s worth it. All of it: discomfort in body is numbed till night-time when I must sit still with it. Dreams are worth all the sacrifice one makes. Small sacrifice motions small dreams into reality’s mirage. Undefined, expansive dreams may enter the world of matter and forms from the minds imaginative eye through perseverance, an un-quivering belief in self, and an alchemical quest for knowledge of self: searching for questions and looking within oneself for the purest form of truth–that thing which we basically are.

I will graduate in December. And graduation, that diploma, means more to me with every shiver and pang. The more I sacrifice, the more motivated I am to achieve my dreams. And the discomfort dulls. And I am worth it. And my dreams are worth it. And every dream is worth it. What else is there to live for in this life and body and flash of time, a momentary collapse to an instant we call a lifetime. The more I sacrifice, the more meaningful every sunrise wake up and bus token I give to a neighbor and good conversation means. Significant. Sacrifice. Like two ropes of a swing, I am taking a ride of a lifetime and I intend to take this opportunity and wow my sense of wonder with eyes wider like empty dinner plates every day. I am grateful.

Consciousness creeps in with a stretch, a yawn, and ten words:

The Truth Demands Three Tenses to be Told.

This dream proverb is entrenched and feels so fluent, in comparison to last nights foggy dream-scape, that I am sure it has been reiterating itself forever and a night.

I have an image in my mind that visually depicts this statement, and this morning I’ll work on sketching it out. Until then, below are some multiple exposure photographs and graphic designs in process that I’m working on–

Memories, Dream, Reflection by Carl Jung and Anne Jaffe took me a good portion of the summer to read from cover to cover. This auto/biography has provided a great deal of meaning and symbolic significance to my personal perspective. I interacted with the text, reading and writing with a pen and highlighter handy; below are a few of many sentences extracted from the book that speak volumes in the space of a few sentences.

As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being.

***

“Bidden or not bidden, God is present.” Carl Jung, the eminent psychologist, had this quote carved over the front door of his Zurich home, as well as on his tombstone. It is an English translation of the Latin “Vocatus Atque Non Vocatus Deus Aderit”, a quotation he came across when studying Erasmus. The words are said to originate from the reply given by Delphic Oracle to the Spartans when they were planning a war against Athens: “Yes, the Gods will be present, but in what form and to what purpose?”

***

Life has always seemed to me like a plant that lives on its rhizome. Its true life is invisible, hidden in the rhizome. The part that appears above ground lasts only a single summer. Then it withers away an ephemeral apparition.

When we think of the unending growth and decay of life and civilizations, we cannot escape the impression of absolute nullity. Yet I have never lost a sense of something that lives and endures underneath the eternal flux. What we see is the blossom, which passes. The rhizome remains.

***

When people say I am wise, or a sage, I cannot accept it. A man once dipped a hateful of water from a stream. What did that amount to? I am not that stream.

I am at the stream, but I do nothing. Other people are at the same stream, but most of them find they have to do something with it. I do nothing. I never think that I am the one who must see to it that cherries grow on stalks. I stand and behold, admiring what nature can do.

There is a fine old story about a student who came to a rabbi and said, “In the olden days there were men who saw the face of God. Why don’t they any more?” The rabbi replied, “Because nowadays no one can stoop so low”.

Like this:

Sense the Invisible

// Well, Do You?

The process of analyzing the results and considering the application of four psychometric tests I took in a life planning course this summer has taken me back to my roots as a young and eager undergraduate psychology major. The video below is a staple in intro to psychology courses, I am sure, but it’s still fun none the less. Watch and see for yourself:

Interested? You are in luck: click on the picture below to visit the home page for this research, book and corresponding videos described in the book. Enjoy 🙂

Like this:

Scratching the surface of sleep: with the crescent of a mind, and waxing subjectivity by the by the breath, sleep stage #1 ushers the unconscious into the scenery of my minds’ eye.

I absolves into a removed viewer, leagues under the sea. Deep water, like deep space, appears black. Black as the underbelly of a weathered hand coated in oil, where only the crease and motions of sweeping lines remain self-reflective. Under the sea, these lines were the echoing treads of small fish. The Fins waving like flags in the wind, sent ripples that danced in coordination. Half-aware, half analyzing possible meaning, my phantom dream right hand began to throb: a pulsating ache combined with a hollow whistling of my joints–the chilly sensation of cold, dry wind rustling through the emptiness of an abandoned attic. Until this point “I” had no “body”;”I” could not be located.

My grandmother was sleeping upstairs directly above me, and she thinks her hand is broken. She is not typically one to make a fuss or complain, so I know her right hand is in a lot of pain. In my dream, I saw the fish of my grandma and watched the echoing treads make their way and splash into me, and I felt another pang in my right hand. Dream empathy of the unconscious.

Over the course of my life, and underlying theme and realization across dreams is the appearance of a pen with red ink.

During my dream, I realized I was realizing this in a dream when I lifted the veil of dream illusion and saw a pen with red ink was writing it out. This scared the crap out of me. I felt like a puppet, where I was controlled unbeknownst to me throughout the course of my dream when I really focused ( and I still believe this to be true because it is true the pen with red ink is all over my waking sleep). My dream analysis in my dream is this was a split of my personality. The red ink pen was interpreted like a student. It is my self-criticism writing and expressing my deviations from ideal. Upon waking and reflecting on this dream, however, the God-fearing the epiphany inspired in me and puppetry sensation and what I saw was a glimpse at the predestination predetermination fate and collective unconscious level.

Before I feel asleep I was thinking about synchronicity: Carl Jung’s theory of acausal parallelism.

After the red ink dream.

Play this song while you read about the second dream. I listened to it on repeat yesterday, and when I turned it back on again today, the colors and spirit of the song bled into the same residual sentiment of my dream.

Bigger Than My Body [John Mayer, Heavier Things, 2003}

Dream #2: A narrative type of dream, again like two night ago, it stuck me as unusual because it was in the first person and a narrative. The first dream of the night latent with symbols and thinking outside myself is more my typical dream. Or perhaps, the type of dream I awake with a memory of experiencing for that very reason. Regardless, my narrative dream:

Valentines Day. I was at the bay of a large body of water, a river I am supposing because of the bridge that crossed it was in the distance. A very foggy and cool crispy day, and yet, the sky was cloudless. Dreary grey February. Many people, my family and other city folk who filled the spaces, were hanging out at the bay. There was a sky writer. Valentines day. There was already some writing in the sky from one love to another, and seemingly out of nowhere, another daring sky writer appeared. He wrote in humongous capital letters, dropping hundreds of feet to assert the message in perfect script. He was writing my name: E. M. I. L…..suddenly, the earlier letters fogged together and he started to finish the name he was actually writing: Elana. The last letter was A. He plunged down from the top going to make the bottom line, and BOOM! The plane ignited on fire and exploded in front of all of the waterfront onlookers. The planes torpedoed into the river and the pilot, tangled in his own parachute, splashed along with the smoldering hunk of metal and propellers.

One moment later, he appeared. Walking out of the water like his legs grew the length to match its depth, be began walking towards the shore, unscathed. I ran and rushed to meet him, asking if he needed anything, an ambulance, anything. A long procession of children carrying memorial plane scraps in two single filed lines were walking behind him (where did they come from?) and a posse of people from the sky writing company brushed me off:” Silly girl, we have procedure for this you know, he is fine, just an accident, and did you see the form of those letters, he almost finished, Perfect!” They were women and men with blonde hair and those cell phone that attach to your face hands free in grey formal business attire. I watched the process of children following them arise from the river, and I awoke.

Like this:

The following Idea Worth Spreading shared at a TEDx conference moved tears to my eyes. I find it meaningful, and I hope for anyone else who watches this, meaning can continue to flow from this shared experience. A little over a year ago, I experienced a concussion to a similar part of my brain as Jill Bolte Taylor, and I personally relate to some of the sensation and experiences in the aftermath of head trauma Taylor describes. She tells her personal story in a moving way, and it inspires me to continue to individuate and strengthen my own resolve and voice as well.

Also, this famous neuroscientist I first was exposed to a few years ago in a Cognitive Psychology course popped into my life again today. He’s kind of like Steve of Blues Clues, but with neuroscientific riddles.

An idea struck me, and like a vessel with an opposable thumb, I will try to relay the message that shook me, through me, onto paper:

What if souls are oscillating travelers amongst and between the powerful forces of the universe–similar to plasma forms in a lava lamp.The soul’s energy manifests as matter, and eventually transforms back into energy, etc. When the energy takes shape as a body, the place on the trajectory path – ascending or descending- from soul to soul.

Personally, I feel as though I was born an old soul. Perhaps I rested on the abstraction of age, and a more accurate conceptualization for this sentiment and knowing of experiences I’ve yet to occur in this life, is that I was born from the crux ascending upwards from lowest point of decent. What if…?

I found my old lava lamp a few weeks ago. The fire-lit blue plasma ‘lava’ bubbles warp shape and gnash forms inside a cone, filled with clear malleable water/air like substance . The clear substance captures my intrigue: similar to describing water in a fishbowl, what the filler fluid is by description is elucidated by what the bubbles are not. The clear fluid lacks corporeal form, and put positively, is the present absence of the capricious lava as it heats and cools.

My thoughts cast a net before my feet, and if I cannot bring myself in the teetering moment of hubris to regain humility, I trip in my own trap. Falling is a torpedo, a whirlpool, a black hole astray from the light, and into the darkness. It is a pattern, this type of descent. Slipping is often set off through the making of a mistake: not for the first time, but for the nth time. Before the fall, the sway precedes the slip. The sway is where I lose a sense of I, and I am taken over despite myself, to spite myself. To flirt with temptation and sway towards the pattern is to set oneself up for a fight, for the pull of temptation towards that trigger, is a vice hungry for a device, and that grip is waiting with white knuckles and the forces of gravity and magnets.

Conversely, I have found that in the moments or flow of moments in which I am living my passion, I am participating in something greater. To practice one’s passion is to participate and honor universal compassion. This experience is the antithesis of vice finding device. A perfect pair, the hand fits into the glove snug as snug is, and the experience of touch and to be touched is muted and diluted just the same. The virtue of compassion and the vice of device are similar in that they can be defined against one another: a binary opposition, like the white fluid around the blue lava bubbles ascending and descending inside of the lamp.

Sometimes when I cannot sleep I watch the shadow play on my ceiling cast by the lava lamp beside me. It is astonishing how remarkably similar the lava shadows are to the caprice of free willed hands, not moving with grace and fluent rhythm, but rather, spastic and sporadic motion and agile jutting with and against the nature of its own movement, as if the shadows have intent or purpose unfolding in their dance.

Strangely, to watch the lava itself, rather than the shadows, makes me feel quite uneasy. As if I am seeing something that I should not be seeing. As if I walked in on a secret and instead of closing the door and moving along with a fleeting apology, I let my curiosity and fascination with that quixotic sensation get the best of me and I lay and stare with full moon eyes.

Noteworthy Add-on:

Digital signals are imprinted with a picture of their destination from the beginning of their journey towards their end. Carl Jung had the good fortune of opening his first private practice in part due to the word of mouth rumor of Jung’s wizardry, spread by a mentally ill local patient. He could not have known his life would lead the path it did, and the improvisational set his life apart from many others. Am I an analogue girl in a digital world?

In the rare books room at Powell’s Books, I stumbled upon The Red Book on display, pages free for the flipping. The images Jung used to express the active imagination told the story when the dutch failed to translate (for me).